Claudio Carvalho In Boston, the prostitute Vivian Heldon (Jan Sterling) is pressed by Mrs. Smerrling (Elsa Lanchester), who is the greedy owner of the boarding house when she lives, to pay the rent of the room that is late. She calls her wealthy lover and schedules a meeting with him at "The Grass Skirt", where she works. However he never appears and Vivian hijacks the drunken client Henry Shanway (Marshall Thompson) and drives his car to Cape Cod. She stops at a diner and calls her lover again to meet him in a spot. When Henry awakes, Vivian lures him and leaves him on the road. When Vivian meets her lover, he kills her with a 45 mm, hides her body and dumps the car in a lake. A couple of months later, her skeleton is found near the beach. Detective Peter Morales (Ricardo Montalban) is assigned to investigate the case without any clue; however the coroner Dr. McAdoo (Bruce Bennett) from Harvard gives technical support to Morales and he finds the identity of Vivian. His further investigation leads him to Henry that lied to justify the hijack of his car to his wife Grace Shanway (Sally Forrest) and to the insurance company. Now Henry becomes the prime suspect and only his wife believe in his words. Will Detective Morales proceed his investigation and find the real killer?"Mystery Street" is an engaging film-noir directed by John Sturges. Ricardo Montalban is excellent in the role of a relentless detective that finds a suspect with all the evidences pointing to him but continues seeking out the real killer. However Elsa Lanchester steals the show in the role of a greedy and despicable woman. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "A Noite de 23 de Maio" ("The Night of May 23rd)

lampic Sometimes movies don't have to be earth-shaking, it is enough they are such escapism and good fun, "Mystery Street" is one of them.It is a cutest little b&w movie from 1950. shot without big budget or biggest stars - final results, however, are first-class entertainment, good old fashioned crime story with police inspectors, unsolved crime, shadows, blackmail and even scientistic help from Harvard Medical School. Looking back, it could hardly been improved even with bigger budget - for this story we don't need big explosions, expensive costumes or cars, everything goes smoothly just like some detective novel.Main protagonist here is Ricardo Montalbán ( young and photogenic Mexican actor) in a role of young policeman doing his research on skeleton recently found. For this case he is assisted by Harvard doctor who easily identifies body of a victim as young woman in her early 20es, probably blonde, probably dancer. Searching for every young woman who might disappear around that time, Montalbán eventually discover her identity and the house where she lived - story than gets complicated because wrong guy gets arrested and more he protests and lies, more he sinks into trouble. Although we have some good acting here, the best of all is a role of nosy landlady who can't help but sniff around for some potential financial award for herself - its no one else but legendary "Bride of Frankestein" Elsa Lanchester and she is brilliant. Every scene with her is a pure joy and effortless acting, she is simply perfect as silly, greedy old woman who don't realize in what danger she puts herself poking her nose in serious crime. It is a pure old fashioned crime movie and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it, since its rarely mentioned today.

moonspinner55 East coast prostitute steals a car from a man--soused, on account his wife is ill in the hospital--in order to get money from an acquaintance parked on an ocean road; she ends up shot dead, and the married man is arrested. Ricardo Montalban plays the police officer who dedicates himself to solving the case, even though it's out of his jurisdiction (one wonders about all the cases going unheeded in Montalban's own territory!). Director John Sturges brings atmosphere (and a tough noir-ish feel) to this script by Sydney Boehm and Richard Brooks, from Leonard Spigelgass' story, but it's never a very suspenseful crime flick, nor complex. Montalban (attempting an image change from romantic matinée idol to an extremely well-dressed, well-manicured cop) isn't very convincing. ** from ****

AaronCapenBanner John Sturges directed this interesting film that stars Ricardo Montalban as Lt. Pete Morales, a police detective from Boston who is investigating the death of a young woman, whose skeletal remains are found washed ashore on a Cape Cod Beach. In order to identify them, he takes them to Harvard professor McAdoo(played by Bruce Bennett) who helps Morales with a positive ID, which leads to the arrest of a young man(played by Marshall Thompson) for her murder. He claims he's innocent, and Morales is inclined to believe him, so further investigates this mysterious case. Montalban is good in unusual role for him, and film fascinating as an early example of forensics technology being used to solved crimes, which is quite popular on TV series today.